President Joe Biden would prefer to be on the campaign trail, making his case for a second presidential term. But it might be fortuitous that having withdrawn from the race, Biden can now give his full attention to a handful of crises that urgently require it.
While American headlines now highlight the remade presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, fighting in the Middle East is escalating toward new levels of danger that could roil energy markets and even necessitate US involvement in a Middle East war.
If a broader war erupts, it could also damage Harris's electoral prospects, given that she's the incumbent, answerable for current conditions.
The killing of a top leader of Hamas in Iran on July 31 — most likely an Israeli job — raises the prospect of an Iranian response that could resemble or exceed the April 14 barrage of missiles Iran fired at Israel. Perhaps more ominously, Israel is now in a state of quasi-war with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group in southern Lebanon that is far more formidable than Hamas.
After the Hamas attack in southern Israel last October, Hezbollah began sporadic attacks in the north that displaced thousands of Israeli civilians and kept Israeli forces on guard. Those have now escalated into lethal exchanges that left 12 Israeli children dead on a soccer field, prompting a July 30 Israeli retaliatory attack in Beirut, which killed a top Hezbollah commander.
It’s almost like a scripted descent into “Israel’s next war,” as Foreign Affairs recently described a possible conflagration — which would be far worse than the one with Hamas.
If this war breaks out, Israel would be under full assault by Iran's most potent proxies, and the United States could face heavy pressure to intervene on Israel’s behalf. A US-Iran proxy war would possibly spook energy markets, since oil infrastructure in Iran and elsewhere might suddenly be in the crosshairs. And a spike in oil prices could upend financial markets just as they're anticipating interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.
Biden and his advisers seem fully aware of the risks, and Biden reportedly helped dissuade Israel from launching a preemptive attack on Hezbollah last fall. But that doesn’t mean Biden can personally control the situation now or that he even has good options. Biden's team, for instance, reportedly urged Israel against the July 30 bombing in Beirut and lost the argument.
“A lot of these issues are vexing problems that are going to outlive the Biden administration,” Mike DiMino, a fellow at Defense Priorities and a former CIA officer, told Yahoo Finance. “I don’t envy the kinds of options that are going to be on the menu for Biden and for our military commanders. If I’m Iran or Hezbollah, this is a golden window."
Foreign adversaries fully understand that this year’s presidential election might constrain Biden, given that any blowup in the Middle East could look like a failure for Biden and Vice President Harris, giving Trump an edge. That could embolden US foes who think Biden might be more forgiving than he would be otherwise. It could also embolden Israel, a quarrelsome yet crucial Middle East ally, who might think Biden has less leverage than usual to demand restraint.
Houthi rebels in Yemen are another problem Biden needs to keep a lid on, even if he can’t solve the problem there. The Houthis went from attacking ships in the Red Sea, in supposed sympathy with Palestinians in Gaza, to attacking Israel itself with a drone that hit Tel Aviv on July 19, killing one. Israel retaliated with an attack on a Yemeni harbor the next day, which seemed to quiet Houthi activity. But that is probably a temporary lull as the Houthis regroup for retaliation of their own.
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Russia, ever eager to jab Washington, might supply the Houthis with advanced anti-ship cruise missiles that would make Red Sea strikes even deadlier. A US-led naval coalition has been bombing Houthi sites since late last year, to limited effect. The Houthis’ disruption of Red Sea shipping affects European and Chinese markets more than the United States, but it has also complicated the Middle East risk matrix and revealed limits on America’s ability to snuff out problems.
After the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., concluded on July 11, Biden held a press conference in which the main topic was whether he would withdraw from the presidential race, which he did a few days later. Getting almost no attention were some Biden remarks on new efforts by America’s enemies to join forces as they seek new ways to weaken the United States and its allies.
“It is a concern,” Biden said, “that you have China and … North Korea, Russia, Iran — countries not necessarily coordinated in the past — looking to figure out how they can have impact.”
He pointed out that China is supplying Russia with technology it needs to ramp up weapons production for its quagmire in Ukraine. China isn’t supplying Russia with finished weaponry, but North Korea and Iran are. And now Russia may be returning some of those favors by helping Iran stir chaos via their proxies the Houthis, and teaming up with China to fly provocative probing flights with bombers off the coast of Alaska.
At the July 11 press conference, a reporter asked Biden if he had a plan for dealing with this new gathering of global bullies. He said yes, he did, but he wasn’t ready to talk about it publicly. What he did say is that the United States and its allies need to build new industrial capacity for a revived arms race that few in the West saw coming, an assessment many strategists agree with.
Biden isn’t going to rebuild the defense industrial base during his last six months as president. But he’ll surely try to keep hostilities in the Middle East and elsewhere from mushrooming, and if he succeeds, it will be a welcome gift for his successor. If Harris v. Trump remains the dominant story through Election Day on Nov. 5, that could be one of Biden’s biggest triumphs.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X at @rickjnewman.
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